Wireless communication devices may be used in conjunction with photographic equipment, such as for communicating a synchronization signal from a camera body to a remote flash device. The synchronization signal is utilized to cause the remote flash device to emit flash lighting at the same time as image acquisition by the camera body. Such wireless communications devices and their wireless communications circuitry, such as a transmitter, are typically powered by a battery source of power. These batteries may be large and add size and weight to the device, which can impact the strength of the mounting required to affix the device to the camera body. Additionally, the battery can be drained quickly of power when the wireless device is powered on, partly due to the high power requirements of some transmitter and receiver circuitry.
Attempts have been made to minimize power consumption in photographic wireless communication devices. One attempt involves placing the wireless communication circuitry in a sleep or hibernation mode after a predetermined time of inactivity of wireless synchronization or other transmission activity. In one such system, the transmitter of the device could be returned to a full operation mode by a user of the device actuating a button on the device.
An early photographic wireless device included a default start-up mode (i.e., a low speed mode) that kept the transmitter oscillator of the device in a non-enabled state until transmission was needed. If the photographer set the camera body to a shutter speed that he or she predicted was to fast for the low speed mode, the photographer could manually turn the device off and actuate a combination of buttons on the device to power the device back on in a high speed mode in which the oscillator remained in an enabled state. Such a device required the photographer to manually recognize that the shutter speed that he or she intended to use required the high speed mode of the device and, in addition to setting the shutter speed on the camera, taking the time to fully power down the wireless device and manipulate multiple buttons before the wireless device could trigger remote flash devices. Such a device likely would negatively impact a photographers ability to rapidly move from one photographing scenario to another where the shutter speed of the camera body changed.